Around 6:30pm on Sunday evening, at roughly the same time that Jonas Vingegaard was visiting the Tour de France's medical vehicle just outside its main media centre for definitive confirmation of his broken collarbone, journalists inside were hearing Tadej Pogačar give a video-linked post-stage press conference discussing Vingegaard's absence.
The Slovenian's comments were succinct but heartfelt, making it clear that the link between himself and the rider two years his senior was much more than just having Vingegaard as his most tenacious rival in this year's battle. But in essence, it boiled down to one very simple phrase Pogačar made about the Visma-Lease a Bike leader: "The Tour won't be the same without him."
You can certainly say that again. The way Pogačar and Vingegaard have occupied the top two spots of the Tour podium for the last five years, no matter the order, was already a record for any Grand Tour, and since 2021, their rivalry has essentially defined the GC race. Each year there's been a different person on the third step of the podium, two of them - Geraint Thomas and Richard Carapaz - Grand Tour winners in their own right. But the two planets circling each other at the very top of the Tour hierarchy have remained the same, in a splendid isolation all of their own making and choosing.
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No matter the result, the tenacity which Pogačar has shown in his determination to win the Tour has been matched, pedal-stroke for pedal-stroke, by Vingegaard throughout that time, and Pogačar would be the first to agree that at least once Vingegaard's determination has been in a class of its own.
After all, if Pogačar came back to the 2023 Tour with his right arm still in a sling because of his broken wrist injury in Liège-Bastogne-Liège that April, then in 2024 Vingegaard returned to the Tour just months after a downhill crash had left him lying on the side of the road in the Basque Country so badly hurt he was not certain if he was dying. It wasn't a mere participation for the sake of it, either: in the 2024 Tour up until the Pyrenees, it looked as if Vingegaard was poised to add a third Tour to those he'd won in 2022 and 2023. As we all know, that wasn't to be - but the courage Vingegaard showed in doing his utmost to return to the Tour after such a horrendous crash, and injuries remained etched in cycling's collective memory.
For the last two years, even while Pogačar has not only remained in command of yellow and stretched the distance between the two of them on GC, Vingegaard has remained just as doggedly determined to shorten that gap. That it hasn't worked - and the way Vingegaard has gone off and added other Grand Tours to his palmares in the meantime is in some ways a tacit admission of that - is in some ways beside the point.
Come what may, Vingegaard has continued to keep the Tour as his main goal of the year, and that has made him the reference point for those wanting to take on Pogačar as well. As Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe's lead director Patxi Vila told Cyclingnews after Le Lioran, when he was asked if it was possible for his two leaders to beat Pogačar, he instantly pointed the short-term goal to be beating Vingegaard. "If we win that battle," he said, "then we'll move onto another battle." To get to Pogačar, in other words, you had to get through Vingegaard first.
In fact, over the last five years, such consistent maintenance of his 'best of the rest' status has meant that Vingegaard has remained the link between the 'first mortals' behind Pogačar and the stratospheric level at which the four-time Tour winner operates.
The distance between the Slovenian and the Dane was a notable one, and even this year Pogačar was pointing out that while Vingegaard was turning out some amazing rides, he'd actually gone down a notch or two compared to 2025. Certainly there were numerous voices pointing out how the battle for the podium was more open than ever. But that's only a reminder that, in previous Tours, just as there was a yawning gap between Pogačar and Vingegaard, there was an almost equally important distance between the Dane and the rest of the field.
So as a result, with Vingegaard out of contention, the podium battle now opens up more intensely than at any point in Pogacar's reign in yellow. And that's something that could have an interesting (or, at the very least, unprecedented) series of effects on how the UAE racer handles things from his lofty position on GC, too.
One immediate consequence is that Visma's increasingly effective work on the front on mountain stages - most notably in trying to bring back the break on stage 15, only for Vingegaard to crash out - will now be replaced by bids for stage wins. That, in turn, could mean UAE have more work on their plate to control the climbs, even if Pogačar himself appears more than able to handle any challenges to his domination. As a result, a more anarchic third week than usual may yet materialize, and if Pogačar was already taking on a role in the podium battle beneath him when he shepherded Isaac del Toro to the Solaison summit on stage 15, he may find himself drawn into the GC podium tussle in ways he does not want to as well.
Certainly, in any case, the sparks will fly harder than ever to occupy a spot which was widely taken for granted as belonging to Vingegaard. But bereft of a rider who, even when losing, was always an integral element of Pogacar's victories, the Tour has now been deprived of an interesting point that for the last five years it had taken for granted. And above all, no matter who fills the power vacuum abruptly created between here and Paris, after five years of such tenacious resistance to the Pogačar rule of law, the gap left by Vingegaard will likely tower over whatever they can achieve in the third week of the 2026 Tour.
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